Tips for Dealing With Bad Body Image Days From An ED Therapist
Struggling with body image today? Here are some practical tips
Mar 21, 2024
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1 - Take a deep breath.
I know, I know. How cliché, right? But it really helps.
The idea of slowing down may feel annoying at first. Whenever I’m having a bad body image day and I think about breathing exercises, I feel annoyed. I’m like “ I don’t want to fricking take a deep breath!! ” It gives me the exact same feeling of being told to calm down when I’m freaking out.
So, I know how this sounds. But just try it out. Take a deep breath in through your nose for 5 seconds, hold it for 3 seconds, then exhale for 5 seconds. Do it 3-5 times.
Now let’s do the work.
2 - Scan your body.
When having a bad body image day, the last thing we want to do is to be grounded in our body. Last thing we want to feel our feelings. That is why we tend to go into action mode (“ Let me weigh myself to see if I have gained weight and if this is why clothes don’t feel good ”) or fixing mode (“ I need to go on a diet, that’s it” ), rather than observing mode (“ What is really happening here? ”).
Bad body image will urge you to get into action without thinking. I invite you to take an observing stance before jumping into any action. Slow down, scan your body from head to toe. Go through each part. What are some physical sensations you notice? How do you feel in your throat? In your chest? Stomach?
3 - Identify the experienced emotion and thoughts.
What do you feel? Feeling fat is not an emotion. It is true that in that moment, the emotion feels like “fat” because you have the bodily-felt sense of being fat so you naturally want to say “ That’s it, literally I feel fat!!!! ”
But feel again. Put one hand on your chest and one on your belly: what is really the emotion here?
If nothing comes up, think about how feeling fat makes you feel: Disgusted? Disappointed? Sad? Anxious? Worried?
If you still cannot identify any emotions, write down the thoughts and beliefs you have about being fat. (Examples: “ How did I let myself get to this body? ”, “ I’ve let myself go ”, “ What do others think of me when they see my body? ”…)
4 - What is the function of this bad body image day?
Function means that the bad body image day is “helping” you in a way (or at least trying, but not really succeeding). Think about what it could be. An example could be:
Is your bad body image day a way for you to avoid unpleasant feelings about something else (because you are fully preoccupied with your body and how it looks)?
If you are interested in delving deeper, check out my other blog post explaining possible different functions bad body image days may have:
[
The Function of Bad Body Image Days
](https://realisticbodytherapist.substack.com/p/the-function-of-bad-body-image-days)
·
December 16, 2021
[Everyone has their bad days, whether you have an eating disorder or not. You look in the mirror and think ‘‘How can a body look so bad?’’. It can also manifest itself as a messy room with clothes thrown all over and ‘‘Ugh, I have nothing to wear.’’
](https://realisticbodytherapist.substack.com/p/the-function-of-bad-body-image-days)
Once you figure out the function, you already have the clues for the next step.
5 - What is the unmet need? What is needed to have a better body image day? (Hint: the answer is not losing weight)
We all have emotional needs and they need to be met in order for us to feel satisfied. Go back to the notes you have made for step 3. Trace back your emotion to the event that caused it, then the unmet need. I will show you with a real bad body image moment I recently experienced:
Bad body image thoughts? “I feel too big, like I’ve let myself go”
Feelings? Felt “wrong”, inadequate and panicky.
From where do I recognize this feeling? The moment where I felt I wasn’t good enough as a therapist in a session. I was later scrolling on social media to soothe myself and saw an influencer with a really thin body, telling me that I should be eating at least 2 grams of protein per body weight. Which made me compare my body to hers and I felt like I was doing something wrong, that I am not good enough if I don’t follow that diet.
Notice the importance of the sentence“ I am not good enough if I don’t follow that diet ”. It shows me the way: it is the clue I’ve been looking for because it is the moment I connect food with feelings of inadequacy. That is the moment where I go into fixing mode. What this means is that I want to feel adequate, competent; and because of my exposure to thin-ideal and diet culture on social media, in that moment, I thought feeling adequate would be possible by controlling my diet.
So what I experienced as feeling too big was actually more about the feelings of inadequacy around as a therapist and the comparison brought on by social media. The fixing mode of “ _ You can only be good enough if you follow this diet plan_ ” comes in as a solution offered for the unmet need of competence.
But if you really think about it, it started out with my identity as a therapist, not my body. Therefore, the need for competence in that moment is about feeling competent as a therapist. Let’s think together: If I were to follow a diet plan, would it help me feel competent as a therapist? No. What does that have to do with that? It sounds absurd. Being skinny cannot protect me from feeling inadequate or incompetent.
To meet my need for competence, I need to look for ways to meet it in the right area : my identity as a therapist. What can I do? I can think back to moments where I felt good enough. I can think about clients that I’ve worked with and successfully achieved our goals with. I can also read more and learn more.
The message is: You can meet your needs without changing your body, going on another crazy diet or acting on an eating disorder thought. Just tune in to your emotional needs. (Let me know if you would be interested in a detailed blog post about this!)
Now that it is clear what you are really feeling, you have made space for the feeling without trying to fix it and also understand the underlying emotional need; let’s go into action.
6 - Put on comfortable clothes.
Don’t try to put on jeans 2 sizes smaller than your usual just because you want to prove to yourself that you aren’t “fat”. Or don’t put on a tight cropped top because that will be a constant reminder of this feeling you are having right now, through out the day. It’s a recipe for disaster and an invite to eating disorder thoughts. Go for loose clothing, clothes that do not trigger bodily sensations.
7 - Say “Shut up!” to your Inner Critic. (No really, do it!)
Inner Critic is the internal representation of explicit and implicit messages we have received growing up from people around us. The bad body image days can be triggered by the comments your Inner Critic makes (“ Look at me, I’ve gotten so big! ”, “ I wish I had abs like that fitness model I saw on Instagram. My stomach will never look as toned as hers. ”).
Separate yourself from your Inner Critic. Instead of saying “ I’ve gotten so big ”, rephrase to “ My Inner Critic tells me I’ve gotten so big ”. Then proceed to say “ Shut up Inner Critic! You don’t know nothing! ”. If saying it internally doesn’t help, stand up with your shoulders straight and repeat out loud, “ _ Don’t speak to me like that!_ ”.
Your Inner Critic is a bully who needs some serious limits. Because if someone talked to your best friend like that, you would step in to protect them. Show the same care for yourself.
8 - Movement, preferably outside with fresh air and a little sunshine.
The word movement might be triggering for some. This doesn’t mean you should go work out because you need to burn calories because your body needs to change. Never workout from a place of “My body needs fixing”. For me personally, my relationship with working out is still a bit wobbly, I don’t want to associate working out with the way my body looks. And, I live in the Netherlands, where it’s really dark, grey and rainy most of the time, so I cannot go outside as I please. I found my solution: dancing. Playing Just Dance or dancing in my living room blasting good music has really helped me in the past.
A post shared by @realistic.body.therapist
If none of the above feels right to you, sometimes it is just a bad body image day. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. 95% of the time, there is a reason or a triggering event behind bad body image days, but there is also that 5% where we just don’t know. After trying really hard with the techniques above, nothing comes up, maybe it’s one of the 5%. On these days, it helps me to think no more deeply of it. Because sometimes, doing these analyses becomes a way of intellectualizing and avoiding the unpleasant feelings. And unpleasant feelings multiply and get more intense when they are avoided. So I learned to say “ Yeah, it’s just one of those days, that’s it. ” which helped me immensely.
Now you have an idea about how to handle a bad body image day. I believe in you, good luck!
🌱I give online and in-person (Leiden, the Netherlands) therapy and counseling sessions for eating disorders, body image struggles and more.
🌱Send me a message via realisticbodytherapist.com